DSOGaming: "DICE's Johan Andersson revealed today that AMD and DICE are working on a low-level high-performance graphics API for Radeon cards, called Mantle. According to AMD, Mantle offers up to 9X more draw calls per second than other APIs by reducing CPU overhead."
(Battlefield 4, PC, Tech)

Technically, it already is. What AMD have done is packaged up the light-weight and low level console GPU APIs and created a version for use in Windows.

Now PC developers can "code to the metal" of the GPU, which before was nearly impossible due to the layers of abstraction and inefficiencies that OpenGL and DX implicitly apply. All those fancy optimizations that console devs apply to their games to get the most out of console hardware will now be easily applicable to PCs with compatible hardware.

Theoretically, a laptop with the same amount of processing power as a PS4 will produce similar results if developers leverage Mantle. Battlefield 4 will be an interesting case. If they can prove that relatively low-powered PCs are capable of producing PS4-level graphics with a little bit of extra work, that's going to open a whole world of possibilities.

Seriously. If all goes well, we may actually be seeing lower-end rigs giving comparable performance to anything that console is managing. It's going to be interesting to see how things go. I am really excited to be a PC gamer at the moment.

HLSL is de shader language for DirectX. Like OpenGL has its own shader language (GLSL).

Since Gaming is most popular on windows most games just make use of DirectX. And because of this most shader code is written for DirectXs shader language. It's therefor easier for DirectX developers to bring their existing shaders over to mantle. The mantle api probably converts the HLSL to their own shading facility( unless they just adapted HLSL ).

But it's by no means DirectX api compatible( cept for the shaders apparently).

You know consoles have this thing called GPGPU compute in them right. This reduces CPU overhead on the PC by pushing the stuff onto the GPGPU of the PC cards right? Case solved. Its pretty simple really. More CPU compute moves onto the GPU with Mantle API. Likely NVIDIA has a similar plan for themselves to launch a low level API tieing into HLSL, and GLSL.

Its just AMD's version of GPGPU compute highly likely they will expand it past just DirectX/HLSL if they are supporting Valve hardware in the future on Linux. I expect a version compatible with GLSL to be in the works as well.

Both graphics developers want to tie as much as they can directly onto the hardware to squeeze out more power out of every system.

"It's either AMDs own HLSL compiler or a "intermediate language" wrapper. Not really surprised there. Is similar what Sony has in the PS4 SDK."

Yupper's 100%, its mainly becoming one big unified Gaming platform...this bodes very well for the industry.

Example with the PS4

Low-level access and the "wrapper" graphics API

In terms of rendering, there was some interesting news. Norden pointed out one of the principal weaknesses of DirectX 11 and OpenGL - they need to service a vast array of different hardware. The advantage of PlayStation 4 is that it's a fixed hardware platform, meaning that the specifics of the tech can be addressed directly. (It's worth pointing out at this point that the next-gen Xbox has hardware-specific extensions on top of the standard DX11 API.)

"We can significantly enhance performance by bypassing a lot of the artificial DirectX limitations and bottlenecks that are imposed so DirectX can work across a wide range of hardware," he revealed.

The development environment is designed to be flexible enough to get code up and running quickly, but offering the option for the more adventurous developers to get more out of the platform. To that end, PlayStation 4 has two rendering APIs.

"One of them is the absolute low-level API, you're talking directly to the hardware. It's used to draw the static RAM buffers and feed them directly to the GPU," Norden shared. "It's much, much lower level than you're used to with DirectX or OpenGL but it's not quite at the driver level. It's very similar if you've programmed PS3 or PS Vita, very similar to those graphics libraries."

But on top of that Sony is also providing what it terms a "wrapper API" that more closely resembles the standard PC rendering APIs.

Online gaming - with real names

Sony is set to include support for a player's "true name" into online gaming on PlayStation 4. Every player has dual identities - their real name and profile picture, and a second online ID with PSN avatar.

"It's kind of up to you how you want people to have access to your true name. You're going to have to explicitly enable that. Not everyone is going to see your true name by default," Norden said during his GDC talk. True names are automatically enabled and visible to any friends you import from social networks where you have already shared this information - for example, Facebook. Real identities are also shared through a process described as

"true name search" which we assume to be akin to finding friends on Facebook. Outside of these two paths, these details are only shared when players explicitly agree to share them with one another. Sony also confirmed that the friends list max limit on PlayStation 3 has been increased for the new console.

"The key is that it doesn't sacrifice the efficiency of the low-level API. It's actually a wrapper on top of the low-level API that does a lot of the mundane tasks that you don't want to have to do over and over."

The cool thing about the wrapper API is that while its task is to simplify development, Sony actually provides the source code for it so if there's anything that developers don't get on with, they can adapt it themselves to better suit their project.

Coincidently, I just said in (another) SteamOS thread, that OpenGL won't cut it.

This is exactly why. If SteamOS can leverage this (or it's own interface) this will be huge for Valve. We need a new API, and a new box which actually is built on that. Preferably this should also support NVidia (or any other card).

I'm curious how this will fit into Windows. It needs to bypass DirectX (and Windows drivers) to make this work. I can't believe it won't have "side effects". AMD seems it's in the right position to push this on their own. We'll see. But it must be an open API eventually.

And, yes, this is plenty of incentive for (engine) developers. Drawcall optimization is a pain with current APIs.

This needs to not be proprietary to just GCN to really take off but it sounds like that's not the case but am looking forward to seeing what devs can do with low level access on something like the 290X considering the amazing things we have seen on consoles near the end of the console cycle.

there is still the fact that consoles have standard hardware while devs would be wasting their time by coding to the metal on certain PC hardware when there are a gazillion of different set-ups out there. DirectX already provides some low level extensions but nobody gives a fk.

At the end of the day most games on PC are nothing but console ports, so we all are essentially playing the same game even if you have 20GB of super fast ram and a $1000 card. All you get for burning that kind of cash is slightly higher res and frame-rate.

Modern day GPUs are so powerful and they become cheap so fast that low level programming is useless, a wasted effort for an ever changing environment. This is only necessary for consoles because console hardware stays the same for years, so this is the only way to squeeze more out of them.

If this API were widely available for any GPU then it would sense. But an API that will require more effort only to benefit a few? Most devs will ignore it, except for those within AMD's paycheck or advertising deals of-course.

However, this will be awesome for lower specced chips such as laptop GPUs and lower-mid-range desktop GPUs. This will get games with better graphics running on cheaper PC hardware. Developers can continue to rely on the raw power of PC hardware if they choose to or see little value in the extra effort.

Seven PC elitists disagreed with what you said when it's true... PC games based on 360 and PS3 multiplatform ports are the same game with higher resolution, framerates and smoother textures... And they claim that to be the reason for spending thousands of dollars for new graphics cards every six to eight months...

@flying if you ever upgraded your card after 1-2 years either A you bought a shitty card or B wasting money because you dont get any significant gains on cards per value until on average 4 years. A 250-300 dollar card can last 3-4 years easily 350-400 card 5-6 years easily anything higher than that you probably shouldn't be buying anyway. Good gfx cards are quite expensive especially when you put it in retrospect that they cost more than consoles alone most of the time. I bought my gfx card 4 years ago and its still kicking strong being able to play games on ultra @ 30 fps at 1080p and better optimized games at 45-60 fps.

With that said I think the hardware in consoles or at least the ps4 is on par if not better than my PC currently but coming in a box at 1/3 the cost. Will know for sure when mine arrives on the 15th for comparisons but consoles are definitely a better investment. Glad to see more AMD optimization since I use amd cards as well, will benefit me on both platforms.

"WOW.. it is open? Strange and good?! This changes my thought all together as it would be possible at some level to also be applied to the consoles. Am I correct in this?"

you are correct, yupper's 100%

@Letros

"Oh god, this reeks of 3Dfx, DX API put an end to that. So we're going back to the days of certain games requiring specific cards. It'll be a pissing contest between AMD/Nvidia on who can score the best games for their cards."

No , its not read it again. that is far from the case. when they are talking about unified it is about really making it true.

Oh god, this reeks of 3Dfx, DX API put an end to that. So we're going back to the days of certain games requiring specific cards. It'll be a pissing contest between AMD/Nvidia on who can score the best games for their cards.

3DFX Glide was pretty slick, good enough to have my old Voodoo 4 go toe to toe with the Geforce 256 in certain games. Glide produced the same 32 bit color or colour (Brits) using 3DFX 20 bit dithering technique improving performance by 25 percent depending on the game. DX API got the upper hand with S3 textures and T&L back in the late 90s/early 2000s.

I have jump from Win xp to Win7 m avoided Vista like the plague and i plan on doing the same with Windows 8. My buddy is sold on Windows 8 but with heavy modification to it. I am not ready for the headache

Windows 8 and Windows is garbage period. No one with any computer knowledge whatsoever is upgrading to it for a reason. Microsoft needs to be removed from the gaming and PC-user communities period. It will be gone, all in due time. It's always "Just enough", or BROKEN with Microsoft, never any leaps and bounds, I think I can speak for 95% of the population when I say: We are literally tired of it.

Totally. My gaming rig cost about what an Xbox One will cost after tax, and I spent almost half the cost of the machine on the GPU. It's proving capable of next-gen graphics and didn't cost a ton like everyone says a capable gaming PC should cost.

This is awesome news both from a BF4 and an ATI gpu standpoint because cheaper cards can be more efficient going forward. Would not at all be surprised if we saw a similar announcement from Nvidia soon.

As a Network Administrator; Anything that replaces an Architecture that MICROSOFT designed is a huge leap forward in my book, DirextX or not.. it's inevitable in the future if we want to move forward, to remove Microsoft from our lives. Here's the start; Now, whoever is doing it, please hurry up with that Linux-Based Operating System that will inevitably replace the burden that is known to ALL of us as Windows. If you disagree, then you know quite literally.. absolutely nothing about Computers. Thanks

How much additional work would it be to port and optimize that game engine to one additional API Mantle when you are already doing PC-DX, XB360-DX, XBone-DX, PS3, PS4 compared to all work needed to create contents for the 15 games? Especially considering that you port to low level on four of the five architectures?

What if the port to low level APIs will make all your games crush* any competitors resembling game? More polygons, better physics, nicer effects, 4k resolution on reasonably priced cards...

* this would not be done if actual performance is at least two (read three) times on PC. It just wouldn't be worth it from a developers perspective. [Edit: but it might be from the card manufacturers... 10% might be more than enough for them. But once their competitor does the gain would vanish...]

PS This work will not cause DX11, XboxOne, or PS4 ports to suffer. But it might be the reason we are not seeing a Win U port - no idling game engine developer at the moment... EA/DICE judge this to give better return of investment than doing a Wii U port... Nintendo you should have used a GCN GPU! Nvidia will get a low level port before Nintendo Wii U will get any love...